#ethical billionaires

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

#class war #cyanide and happiness #class warfare #classism #ethical billionaires #billionaires

[ninyyya]

#capitalism #billionaire #ethical billionaires #moral billionaires #elon musk #this is a threat

[starry-eyed-psychopomp]

Fuck decent acting, MY favorite genre of nepo baby is “child of Some Rich Guy who funnels their daddy’s money into innovative creative projects that otherwise wouldn’t get made,” especially if those projects are animated

#no ethical billionaires but sometimes those billionaires have kids with good taste #kids who Grace us with skilled artists’ work rather than their own mid acting #nimona #annapurna pictures #laika #laika studios #coraline #paranorman

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Thankful for class consciousness

On November 27, I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

Before the term "ecology" came along, people didn't know they were on the same side. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer – what does the destiny of charismatic nocturnal avians have to do with the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere?

But as James Boyle has written, the term "ecology" welded together a thousand issues into a single movement. When we talk about "looking at our world through a lens," this is what we mean – apply the right analytical lens and a motley assortment of disparate causes becomes a unified, coherent project:

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=dlj

Unfettered, planet-destroying, worker immiserating corporate power is only possible in the absence of such a lens. Before neoliberalism can destroy our lives, it must first convince us that we are all disconnected. "There is no such thing as society," isn't just an empty slogan: it's a weapon for dismantling the democratically accountable structures that can stand against industrial tyrants.

That's why neoliberalism is so viciously opposed to all kinds of solidarity, why corporate apologists insist that the only elections that matter are the ones where you "vote with your wallet." It's no surprise that the side with the thickest wallets wants to replace ballots with dollars!

Today, at long last, after generations of deadly corporate power-grabs, we are living through an ecology moment where all kind of fights are coalescing into one big fight: the fight to save democracy from oligarchy.

There are many tributaries flowing into this mighty river, but two of the largest are antitrust and labor. Antitrust seeks to ensure that our world is regulated by democratically accountable lawmakers who deliberate in public, rather than shareholder-accountable monopolists who deliberate in smoke-filled rooms. Labor seeks to ensure that contests between profit for the few and prosperity for the many are decided in favor of people, not profit.

This coalition is so powerful that the ruling class has never stopped attacking it. Indeed, the history of US antitrust law can be viewed as a succession of ever-more-insistent laws enacted solely to make it clear to deliberately obtuse judges that competition law is aimed at corporations, not unions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Rising corporate power and declining worker power is bad for all of us. The failure of successive US administrations to block airline mergers led to sky-high prices and a proliferation of "junk fees" that can double the price of a ticket. The monopoly carriers stand to make $118b this year from these fees:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90981005/airlines-fees-118-billion-dark-patterns

The consolidation of the agricultural sector led to cartels that conspired to rig the prices of our food. These Les Mis LARPers rigged the price of bread!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-bread-price-fixing-1.6883783

Remember eggflation? Nearly all the eggs in US grocery stores come from a single company, Cal-Maine, which owns dozens of brands, including "Farmhouse Eggs, Sunups, Sunny Meadow, Egg-Land’s Best and Land O’ Lakes eggs":

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/13/business/egg-prices-cal-maine-foods/index.html

With all our eggs in one basket, it was easy for a single company to rig the egg market, blaming everything from bird flu to Russian invasion of Ukraine for doubling egg prices while their profits shot up by 65%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

Antitrust isn't just about monopoly – it's also about oligopoly. The American meat cartel pretends that it's not rigging markets by outsourcing its price-fixing to a "clearinghouse" called Agri Stats:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

Agri-Stats gets data from all the Big Meat companies, "anonymizes" it, and publishes it back to its subscribers, who use the service to coordinate across-the-board price-hikes that have cost the public billions in price gouging (meanwhile, Big Meat was able to secure $50b in public subsidies).

For forty years, governments have ceded power to "autocrats of trade" who usurped control "over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

But that era is coming to an end. In the past year, American regulators have blocked airline mergers and promulgated rules banning junk fees. They've dragged price-fixing clearinghouses into court:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-turkey-eggs-and-air-travel-just

They're getting results, too: for the second year in a row, turkey prices are down. Cranberries, too (18%). Same for whipping cream (25%). Pie crusts are down. So are russet potatoes. Airfares are down 13.2%.

The egg cartel just lost a long-running court case over the last egg price-fixing campaign, which gouged Americans from 1990-2008:

https://www.pymnts.com/cpi_posts/kellogg-kraft-secure-victory-in-price-fixing-lawsuit-against-egg-producers

The same fact-pattern that was revealed in that court case is repeated in this year's eggflation scandal:

https://farmaction.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Farm-Action-Letter-to-FTC-Chair-Lina-Khan.pdf

That's terrific ammo for the FTC, and will doubtless benefit the Democrats running against would-be Indiana senator John Rust, whose family owns convicted egg cartel member Rose Acre Farms and whose wife just stepped down as chair of the board.

One underappreciated aspect of the global war on corporate power is that the same corporations commit the same crimes in countries all over the world, which means that whenever any government establishes evidence of those crimes, they are of use to all the other governments. Competition enforcers from the UK, EU, USA, Singapore, South Korea and elsewhere are coordinating to target the Big Tech cartel. Maybe Google and Facebook and Apple are bigger enough to resist any one of those governments – but all of them?

https://cmadataconference.co.uk/

One notable absence from the anti-monopoly coalition is Canada. While other countries merely stopped enforcing their competition laws in the neoliberal era, Canada never had a good competition law to enforce. Canada's official tolerance for monopolies has allowed a handful of companies to seize control over the economy of Canada and the lives of Canadians:

https://www.canadaland.com/shows/commons-monopoly/

These monopolies are largely controlled by powerful families, Canada's de facto aristocracy, whose wealth and power make them above the law and subordinate the country's democratic institutions to billionaires' whims:

https://www.canadaland.com/tag/dynasties/

At long last, Canada has called time on oligarchy. Last week's Fall Economic Statement included an announcement of a muscular new competition law, including new merger guidelines, a new "abuse of dominance" standard, and Right to Repair rules:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7132855021548769282/

The law also includes interoperability mandates for Canada's highly concentrated – and deeply corrupt – banking sector. These measures are strikingly similar to new measures just introduced in the US by the CFPB:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

The arrival of Canada's first fit-for-purpose competition rule coincides with all kinds of solidaristic movements in Canada that are fighting corporate power from the bottom up. Even Ontario, led by one of the most corrupt premiers in provincial history, can't break its teachers' union:

https://globalnews.ca/news/10105600/ontario-elementary-teachers-reach-contract-deal/

It's not just workers who benefit from solidarity: Tenants' unions have formed across the province in response to corporate takeovers of scarce rental stock. These finance-sector landlords have armies of lawyers who've figured out how to bypass rent-control rules and evict tenants who balk. Rather than rolling over, tenants' unions are organizing waves of rent-strikes:

https://macleans.ca/longforms/rent-strikes-canada/

As with Big Tech, the illegal tactics of the rental sector aren't confined to a single nation. In America, Wall Street landlords have dramatically increased the price of housing and kicked off an eviction epidemic the likes of which the country has never seen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

And as with Big Meat, landlords use arm's-length clearing houses to rig rental markets, coordinating across-the-board rent hikes:

https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent

In other words: to fix the housing market, tenants all over the world need to learn the tactics of labor unions. Housing regulators have to learn from agricultural regulators. Americans tenants have to learn from Canadians. These aren't 1,000 different fights – they're one big fight, and the coalition for dismantling corporate power is vast and powerful.

The most powerful weapons our bosses have is convincing us that we are weak and they are strong – so strong that we shouldn't even try to fight them. But solidarity is absurdly powerful, which is why they go to such great lengths to discredit it. In Sweden, the solidarity strikes against Tesla – who refuses to recognize its maintenance workers' union – have spread to nine unions.

Tesla can't get its cars offloaded at the ports. It can't get its showrooms cleaned. No one will deliver its mail. No one will fix its chargers. The strike is spreading to Germany, and workers at its giant Berlin factory is set to walk out:

https://www.metafilter.com/201514/Swedish-Tesla-workers-go-on-strike

There's something delicious about how palpably frustrated Elon Musk is by all this, as he realizes that neither his billions nor his bully pulpit are a match for workers in solidarity:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-23/elon-musk-calls-swedish-tesla-strikes-insane-as-impact-spreads

It's a reminder of just how fragile and weak billionaires are, when we stop believing in them and deferring to them. Rebecca Solnit's latest Guardian column adds up the ways that allowing billionaires to run the show puts us all in danger:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/20/billionaires-great-carbon-divide-planet-climate-crisis

They are the unelected "autocrats of trade" who control "the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life." They are the force that this new ecology movement is coalescing to fight: across borders, across sectors, across identities. No matter whether you are a worker, a tenant, a voter, a shopper or a citizen, your enemy is the billionaire class.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/24/coalescence/#solidarnosc

#pluralistic #james boyle #ecology #corporate power #monopoly #monopolism #eggflation #euthanizing rentiers #money beats ethics #incentives matter #sam altman #open ai #junk fees #cartels #aviation #billionaires #rebecca solnit #price fixing #Rent strike #canada #canpoli #toronto #the rents too damned high #weaponized shelter #tenants union #unions #tesla #sweden #labor #moral injury

[mohabbaat]

Kardashians get criticized all the time (deservedly so). Can you really say that Taylor Swift faces even an ounce of backlash the Kardashians do? In fact everytime you criticize her RIGHTFULLY SO, her stans leap to her defense. Who is defending the Kardashians?

My question why should we be obliged to uplift Taylor only? She has the acknowledgement from every critic, every award show, every institutional body that can give you legitimacy, a huge fanbase that's crazy for you. Why should we peasant folks be also obliged to uplift this already privileged woman?

Taylor Swift deserves criticism for:

1. Being an eco terrorist. 🙄

2. Her liberal white feminism that lacks intersectionality.

3. Her refusal to use her platform to give her voice to pressing issues while branding herself as an icon for the culture.

She is a BILLIONAIRE. She is not oppressed, she is not a victim and her stans need to stop being annoying about her.

i don't know what you are talking about bestie. cause she is clearly oppressed and a tortured poet and she has been wronged by every person in her life. so her fans must defend her. 😔

#i am so sick of her stans who pretend she is a god #like bro. she is a billionaire. #and the one thing about rich people is that they have NO ethics at all #asks #anti taylor swift

[wiste]

Once again! It is okay to like her, but it is important to acknowledge that she is not a great person.

#free palestine #free gaza #eat the rich #eat the fucking rich #it is not ethical #EW BILLIONAIRES #taylor swift #carbon emissions #it’s okay to like her #but she’s not a good person

[queerasian]

sometimes i’ll see people talking about shiv roy esp compared to her brothers (esp roman in season 4) and this is all i can think of

#like theyre all deeply fucked up and not very good ppl but it is astounding how much harsher ppl judge shiv than anyone else #its the misogyny!!! #not that this show is a contest of morality nor do i think its helpful or even possible to rank any of the characters by ‘goodness’ or wtv #like that is not what the show is about imo you cannot watch these fictional billionaires with the mindset of categorizing their ethics #i could write a lot about this but just have this badly made post for now. lol #succession #shiv roy #queerasian.txt

[veganymph]

at a certain point some people need to realise it’s not enough. they need to realise that they should feel some slight guilt for how much useless things they consume or how much plastic they throw out or how much meat or dairy they eat. at a point you have to look in the mirror and actually ask yourself if it’s necessary. capitalism is an evil system that thrives off of your human condition to feel guilt for your actions. it wants you to feel like the problem. however, that doesn’t execute individual responsibility. that doesn’t mean you don’t have to try. you are responsible for your actions and frankly if you don’t feel a bit bad about wasting money on something harmful, that’s concerning. you don’t get to say ‘no ethical consumption under capitalism’ and then do exactly what capitalism wants you to do. you should feel bad for unnecessarily consuming unethical products because you have a responsibility to be kind to others, not because you’re responsible for climate change and so on. you have a duty to give a fuck about others

#my post #bit of a rant-y post sorru #i’m just sick of seeing posts like ‘it’s okay if you buy fast fashion no ethical consumption blah blah’ #like unless you’re really broke then no! it’s not fucking okay and you should feel bad about it i’m sorry!! #you should feel bad about doing unnecessary bad-ness #no you aren’t responsible for the climate changing actions of billionaires #but you are responsible for community. you’re a human. you SHOULD feel bad knowing you’re harming others thru your actions #and of course this is a very very very nuanced discussion #if you need to make unethical choices to live then you do it #survival is important and i will throw punches at people who shame you for that #it only becomes a problem when it’s not necessary #vegan #veganism #go vegan #climate crisis #climate change

[pokingcactus]

I know there is a lot of talk on this already and as I have reblogged some memes about it I wanted to clarify my position on the oceangate drama

Yes I believe it is terrible that those 5 people died. No I do not think there is a chance any of them are still alive. Yes I am also making fun of it and laughing at memes.

Human suffering is objectively always bad, even for evil billionaires. However I still believe there is no ethical way to become/stay a billionaire when so many people around the world are suffering for basic necessities.

The CEO knew of the many flaws the titan had, the window had only been declared safe for the 1300m sealevel pressure, the Titanic is down at 4000. This is why I firmly believe they have imploded. Honestly the most humane way to go out of all of their options in my opinion. Nevertheless, there were countless cut corners when it came to the safety of the vessel. He knew and still went through with it to safe some extra bucks.

There are multiple governments looking for these 5 people. Millions of taxpayer dollars. Money that could have went into helping others. Helping the several hundred migrants that drown trying to cross the seas for safer pastures. Instead it's being used to search for 5 rich fucks that went into the living death trap of their own volition, to look at a watery mass grave.

"Oh but they had ties to the Titanic." So do many other people. There are a lot of museums you can go to instead.

"One of them is only 19 years old!" And that is terrible. I'm not denying that. But it still cost a quarter of a million dollars for him to go on that submersible and he did. He signed the death waiver and went on it. He is still a very rich young adult capable of looking at that death trap and being "Um I'm not sure about this, dad."

I just think it is irony that the submersible that 5 rich people paid a lot of money for, sank due to corner cutting to save more money for the CEO, to look at one of humanities greatest hubris's, now probably is laying next to it with a few more people in that mass grave.

#titanic #oceangate #titan #no ethical billionaires

[artbyblastweave]

Getting a T Shirt made that says “RORSCHACH WAS RIGHT*

(small print) 

*ABOUT NOT LETTING OZYMANDIAS OFF THE HOOK FOR THE SQUID THING WHEN IT WAS SUCH AN OBVIOUSLY FLIMSY, CONCIETED  AND DIFFICULT-TO-SUSTAIN-OVER-THE-LONG-HALL PLAN COOKED UP BY A SINGLE EGOMANIAC WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OVERSIGHT OR PEER REVIEW, NOT ABOUT THE WEIRD TRAD STUFF*

(and then on the back)

*ALTHOUGH ITS TEXTUALLY UNCLEAR IF RORSCHACH HIMSELF IS OR WAS EVEN PSYCHOLOGICALLY CAPABLE OF NOTICING THE LOGISTICAL OR LOGICAL HOLES IN THE PLAN THAT WOULD CONVENIENTLY OBVIATE THE UTILITARIAN ARGUMENT TOWARDS SILENCE; HE APPROACHES IT AS THOUGH THE GIVEN DICHOTOMY WITH WHICH HE IS PRESENTED, UTILITARIAN-DRIVEN SILENCE OR DEONTOLOGICALLY-MOTIVATED APOCALYPSE, IS IN FACT AIRTIGHT, AND HIS SUICIDE IS MOTIVATED BY THIS; IT IS CONCIEVABLE THAT WITH A MOMENT TO THINK, HE MIGHT NOTICE THE HOLES IN THE UTILITARIAN ARGUMENT AS PRESENTED, BUT FEEL THAT ARGUING ON THE BASIS OF THOSE HOLES, RATHER THAN FROM PURE UNCOMPROMISING RETRIBUTIVE DEONTOLOGY, IMPLICITLY LENDS UNDUE CREDENCE TO THE UTILITARIAN LOGIC OF HIS ENEMY, AND INDEED IMPLICITLY CEDES THE ARGUMENT ALTHOGETHER SHOULD OZYMANDIAS PLAUSIBLY ADDRESS ISSUES OF SUSTAINABILITY AND PERSONAL BIAS: HE MIGHT PLAUSIBLY FIND THIS AN EVEN WORSE COMPROMISE OF HIS PRINCIPLES AND BEHAVE EXACTLY AS HE DID IN CANON.

The shirt is gonna have a weird cut but so did the movie

#watchmen #rorshach #anyway I do basically sympathize with him a lot more than I think Alan Moore wanted me to vis a vis the squid issue specifically #and fall in lock step with the conventional Volley of Rorshach Criticisms otherwise #Guys #you have absolutely no insurance against whatever fuckery Adrian tries next #he's proven at a baseline that there's no amount of violence he won't do if he unilaterally decides that it's ethical to do it #granted the rest of you also prove that every single day #but you're a bunch of homeless fugitives and he's a genocidal billionaire #do not let him walk away from Antartica with his decision making faculties intact #thoughts #meta #comic books

[howldean]

and remember kids: the only rationale you need to have for hating a billionaire is that they’re a billionaire! that’s all you need!

#and boy do i have a million other reasons #but there is no need to explain myself further than there are no ethical billionaires #remember that 😌

[pjharvey]

i adore taylor swift as an artist she is genuinely talented and you’re hard pressed to find a female singer-songwriter in my generation who won’t cite her as an inspiration but it’s insane like truly insane how quickly people moved on from the fact that she’s like. a climate criminal. and now that she’s dating kelce she’s making all these ridiculous unnecessary private flights across oceans and continents between concerts just to see him play football that emit more greenhouse gases than the average person could even dream of in their whole lifetime and meanwhile i’m here feeling guilty over throwing away plastic vegan yogurt containers (i don’t eat dairy mainly bc of the greenhouse gas emissions) bc my apartment complex doesn’t recycle that type of plastic.

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

#this isn’t that serious #it’s just a laugh #billionaire #ethical billionaire #capitalism #anti capitalism #self made billionaire #that ones also laughable #i know my answer #because #there is a correct answer #my polls #tumblr polls #likeable but not good #i feel like people like taylor swift will sway this #listen to money game by ren #or #listen to b.i.l.l.s by towa bird #or any other #anti capitalism songs #you should vote #give me your opinions #can’t tell if i should make this a day or a week #fuck it we ball #one week #gimme your thoughts

[howaboutcastiel]

I feel even more strongly today that the swifties are out of touch and unwell

Anyway support sustainability efforts and free Palestine ❤️

#again #there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire #she is not using her platform as nobly as some of you weirdos may think #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #and Taylor swift will still be shitting carbon emissions out of her private jet #she’s not a tortured poet #she is rich #and you all are unwell

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

I have a disease where I can’t listen to Taylor Swift songs while hyping myself up to write fanfic. Because I’ll just want to ditch whatever wip I’m trying to work on to write something based on the lyrics. It’s incurable :(

#my story telling level in prose will never be as good as this woman’s in song #(this isn’t self pitying it’s just in Awe) #ethically I don’t agree with billionaires. but she kinda goes off #wife speaks #not hilda

[techtalkbyjames]

#team biden #ethics #good ideas #scholarships #higher education #billionaires